Iris
by Tris'sLightningQuill
Summary: The scene before Tonks leaves her mum's house during the Battle of Hogwarts in the Deathly Hallows. Tonks's PoV. I wrote this mostly just to justify her death to myself in my own mind.... rated T for safty. Please REVEIW!


**Disclaimer:** I'm not J.K. Rowling. I don't own Harry Potter or anything that implies, cuz If I did own it, Tonks wouldn't have died...

The baby wouldn't quit crying. Rocking back and forth, pacing on the musty carpet of her mother's attic, she tried futilely to shush him. She bounced and jiggled and crooned and stroked to no avail. Teddy screamed and screamed, his little face screwed up and tinged purple, his hair flashing in quick succession from green to teal to red to gray and gold and brown. His screams bit into her soul like an accusation.

"Shh, shh, shh, baby, I know, I know..." She didn't tell him it would be alright, because she and Remus had made a pact never to lie to their son. In truth, she didn't blame him for screaming. If she thought it would help anything, she'd be crying, too. And nobody would be there to hold her, like she was holding him, the thankless lout. She kissed the magenta tuft of hair on his forehead, wishing there was something more she could do for him. By the pitch of his screams she couldn't tell if he was hurt or angry or sick or scared, but she didn't need to know. Her gut was twisted cruelly tight with the same unnamed fear, foreboding, frustration as her son: they missed his Da. The little tremors of his sobs echoed the fluttery feeling in her stomach, the tingle in her skin. Her blood pumped with adrenaline, her breath came quick and shallow. She smelled the dust and felt the press of the small wriggling body clasped against her breast as she paced back and forth, back and forth, never getting anywhere. Her steps were quick bursts of staccato movement, like a stifled sob. She knew her agitation and anxiety was doing nothing to help Teddy calm down, and thought maybe she should just pass him off to her mother, maybe then he could calm down, maybe go to sleep and forget about all this. But she couldn't let go of him. She clung so tightly to her son, as if she could press his body back into hers, as if by holding onto this small piece of the man who was his father, she could bring _him_ back to her.

She had forced herself not to think of what Remus must be doing—how many he had killed, if he was bleeding, hurt, _worse_—so she didn't. It hurt more than anything, this not-knowing. She had thought it was bad when he left her alone on moonlit nights, didn't come back for days at a time. At least then she had had the semblance of a promise. Now, she had nothing. She knew she would go mad. When her vigilance relaxed, when Teddy's screaming distracted her, pulled at the core of her soul that was screaming, too, she saw Remus's body, cold and gray, saw blood on his face, saw his wand, snapped in half beneath an anonymous boot. _Stop it!_ she screamed at herself. The images vanished from her mind, to be replaced by a dark incompleteness, manifested in the image of an empty bed in the ghostly light of dawn...

"Honey, here, let me—"

Her mother had come up the stairs unnoticed, a blanket draped over her arm and a bottle in her hand. Wordlessly, she stared at the face of her mother, saw for a split-second the laughing face of Bellatrix Lestrange, leering, lit by manic blood lust, wand brandishing before the curse sprang and knocked her to the stone. She blinked rapidly, thinking, _I _am _going mad. _She never wanted to hate her mother. _Never._ Andromeda reached for the baby, and wordlessly she handed Teddy over to her mother's gentle care. Her arms flopped lamely to her sides as she watched her mother wrap the blanket around her son to stop him thrashing, cajoled him into accepting the warm milk from a foreign source. Her mother moved with bustling purpose, her movements fluid and direct. She was so serene, so in control. She saw the shadows under her mother's eyes, the lines she'd never noticed before in the pale, beautiful face that looked almost nothing like hers. Guilt flooded her heart as well as grief at the memory of her father, how it was as good as her fault that he was dead, how it really _was_ her fault that Death Eaters had broken into her childhood home and that _her parents_ had been at their mercy.

To her horror tears welled up in her eyes, and she frantically gulped them back; if she started crying now, she knew she'd never stop. She gripped her wand-haft for what little comfort that could give; it was burning a hole in her back pocket—literally—and with a sob that had once dreamed of being a laugh, she remembered Moody's caution—how many times had he growled it at her? How many times had she blithely ignored him?—and choked. He was dead, too. They all were. _Everybody's gonna die. The end, boohoo._ She had to stop feeling sorry for herself. _If only it was that easy..._

"Mum..." She didn't know where to begin.

"You should know better, letting Teddy get all distressed because of your fussing," Andromeda admonished, though her tone was more gentle than biting. "You need to let him know that you're fine, else he'll worry about you, too. Your body tells him more than the words he doesn't understand yet."

"I can't help it, Mum. I'm going crazy. I can't do this. I can't! I—"

"I know." The two quiet words shut her up instantly. She knew that her mother was thinking about Dad, and those months before his death how she'd heard nothing from him, how he'd had to leave and had never come back...

"I need to make sure he's ali—I _have _to know!" Her voice broke with the force of the word, almost a scream, cracked like it had when she was younger, and she dared not think how her mother must see her because of it. Who would let a child run off to blow up Death Eaters? A child was what she was acting like, but nothing mattered, nothing mattered but getting to him. They wouldn't let her. She tore at her hair, hard, beat her fists against her thighs, clawed at the bare skin of her forearms and left bloody rivulets, like the scars she'd seen on Remus's arms, unable to siphon off the frustration gnawing at her brain. An animal groan vibrated in her throat as she clamped down hard on the tears and her shoulders shook with repressed sobs.

"I know. Worry kills, doesn't it?" The words were soft and indifferent, keeping their bitterness and sorrow masked. Tonks felt so ashamed, but knew exactly what her mother felt. She stared at the now-calm, though tear-streaked face of her tiny son, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood. Uncertainty swamped her brain, momentarily blotting out the anxiety she knew to be purely selfish desire, but the fear rose up from her chest and hardened her resolve, though it was hard, so hard, to make the choice. What choices weren't _hard_, in this life? What was fair?

"I have to go, Mum, I _have to_. I can't just wait here for him. He _needs_ me. _I_ need _him_!" She was almost whining now, hysterical, and she knew it, but nothing mattered, nothing else mattered. "I'm not strong enough... I can't go it alone..."

"You know he left you here so that _he_ would know that _you_ were safe, so that he wouldn't have to worry about _you_." Even cradling her grandson, Andromeda manage to stab an accusing finger in her daughter's chest. "So that he could concentrate on coming home safely, not worrying about you."

"Remus and I've all ready _had_ this argument, and I am not about to go at it with you. Hell if _I _need protecting! Hell if _I_ stay here while _he_ goes off to fight! Hell if I'll pander around his freaking Gryffindor pride and chivalry. Hell if I'll be _cosseted_ by the likes of my own _husband_... I can't stand _waiting around_ for him to show up, not knowing if he's _hurt_, if he's dead or alive at all."

Andromeda sighed. "Patience is a virtue, Nymphadora," she reminded her daughter wearily.

"Yeah, well," Tonks gestured helplessly down at the now-quiet baby, "so is virginity." She heaved a sigh. "I _have_ to do this, Mum. Is there any moment of the day where you don't wonder that if _you_ had been with Dad, would he still be alive?" She hated herself for the shocked, hurt look on her mother's face, but knew by the subtle tremor to her lip that the jibe had hit home. "_Please_." Andromeda said nothing. Tonks went on, an edge to her voice, fueled by the sense of urgency swelling in the pit of her stomach, coupled with the anxiety and instigated by the loosening of her mother's resolve. "I don't want to hex you, Mum. I don't, but if you don't get out of my way, I will." And she _would_ do it, too. She'd had done with being kept in the dark, done waiting for death.

Andromeda's wand was raised and leveled at her daughter's chest, despite the fact that she still cradled Teddy in the crook of her arm, who had fallen asleep, his bottle emptied. A wash of heat and sparks rushed at her, and she parried the jinx out of reflex. Incredulity warred with disgust and gratitude and annoyance for control of her face. Disturbed by the action, Teddy stirred, gurgling in his sleep, his small body shuddering with the ghost of a sob. Tonks looked at his tiny features, and tears hazed her vision once again, and a worm of guilt thrust into her stomach. She blinked the tears back, forcing her voice into a tone of unconcern.

"Oh, please, Mum, you think you can outmatch me anymore? Kingsley kept me in a full-body bind for about, oh, ten minutes, _once_, and that's the longest anybody's managed. And he's the best of 'em, if you'll recall. If there's one thing I can do right, it's cursebreak. _Please_, Mum," she added more plaintively. "I _really_ don't want to hex you."

Biting her lip, Andromeda lowered the holly switch and nodded slightly. A great weight seemed to settle over her shoulders; perversely, at the moment that the terrible weight lifted from her daughter's.

Tonks let out an involuntary scream of triumph and threw her arms around her mother. "Thank you, Mum, thank you," she whispered into the graying hair at her mother's temple and kissed her cheek. Her mother proffered Teddy's sleeping body, and she bent over him, caressing his chubby little fists and feet and arms and legs and kissing his face over and over, trying to soak all of him in, memorizing him. _I love you, baby, I love you, I'm sorry, baby, I love you, I'll come back soon._ She squeezed her mother's hand one last time, not seeing the tears on Andromeda's cheeks, not hearing the words unspoken on her lips, and before she could speak them, Tonks had vaulted out the attic window with a surge of something not unlike elation, too impatient to bother with such trivial things stairs and front doors, wand sparking eager and hot in her hand. She thought desperately of the Hog's Head bar and spun midair, her pulse an urgent beat in her ears. She didn't see her mother take up the silent vigil by the window that she had abandoned, Teddy calm and sleeping in her arms, pacing restlessly up and down the dusty attic.


End file.
